April 2005 Archives

[Catchup - had as partial draft - need to clean out the drafts... This referred to April 8th, 2005]

Friday was fun.

Dalibor (Kaffe...) had a problem with his laptop - it didn't have the right output for the presentation system, so I loaned him my 17" Powerbook. it's hard to imagine a more proprietary system that could be used to give a "free software" talk. I almost put a penguin sticker over the glowing Apple on the audience-facing side of the screen so the free-software union wouldn't dock his pay.

My talk on Geronimo went will - I hope it interests people in using it for server-side systems they are building. Not just J2EE (which isn't done yet, but anything where they have a set of long lived components they need to manage...)

Dinner was a hoot. We decided to do something other than beef- someone decided that pizza was the order of the day... (remarkable for me, as my CEO at Gluecode, Chet Kapoor, had played a joke on me before going, warning me about the massive pizza consumption by the people of brazil... he never mentioned the national protein, beef...). The restaurant was chosen, and off we went. I was in Flavio Bergamaschi's car (a Brazilian IBM-er from the UK - who spends his time thinking about VMs... very cool guy...), with two of the organizers and IIRC SOUjavista Tony. it was a fun ride. First of all, the average car in Brazil is small and probably grey, which makes "follow the small gray car" at night a challenge. Second, the Brazilians appear to be genetically predisposed to adhere to the speed limit and adhere to a set of congestion and traffic circle customs that I have yet to grok. The result was losing the group, and following the nearest grey car off into some residential neighborhood. The magic of cellphones was of little help - I don't understand Portuguese, but I suspect the instructions were on the order of "turn left where the old barn used to be...". We eventually synched up with another car at the TV tower, placed conveniently in the geographic center of Brasillia (hard to miss).

After a bit of effort finding the restaurant (Brasillia is a totally planned city in which it appears each residential block is *exactly* the same. The streets are of the same configuration, with the same area of each block reserved for commerce...) we had a nice big group dinner. We made a big "S" out of tables as the party grew (we took them by surprise) and they served us with the same style as the steak places - just bring out pizzas and offer slices.

We were reasonably well behaved until it became clear that regional differences had to be settled, and settled with loud jokes about each others customs and language, all in good fun. The language jokes were interesting. I don't understand the language itself, but it's a beautiful language to listen to, and the regional differences that were the subject of the jokes, while certainly exaggerated, were clear to my ear. The biggest rivalry seemed to be between the northerners and the southerners, with lots of potshots aimed at the people of Rio. There was one person from Rio there - he made a valiant effort to fight back, but he was simply out numbered and in the case of the northerner, out-gunned.

I was amazed how social these dinners were. There seem to be much lower boundaries between strangers in Brazil - we would clap along with other tables for birthdays and such, and they would pay some attention to us. I was also amazed at how late everything was - getting to dinner at 9-11pm is normal, it seems, and the whole family goes. Infants, toddlers, everyone.

[Catchup - had as partial draft - need to clean out the drafts... This referred to April 7th, 2005]

Woke this morning to a beef hangover. It's the only way I can describe it.

Thursday was the "VIP Session" for a small (~70?) group of national govt ministers, IT managers, and organizations related to govt IT, such as state sponsored corporations (I use Fannie Mac as my model, w/o the exec compensation...) as well as IT suppliers to the govt.

We each gave a 15 min talk. I talked about Apache, our governance model, our values and our projects (all at a high level...). Onno talked at the same level about the JCP (but with much fancier slides - the upside of a marketing organization I suppose), and Dalibor talked about the Kaffe project. IIRC, there was a talk by Oracle too about their work.

We then had a panel open to questions from the audience, which ranged all over the map, from development methodology to license questions to community questions.

I think it's important we demonstrate to these guys that Java is a viable open platform for their IT infrastructure (and that they should keep an open mind to OSS licensing!) It's going to take some iterations. I hope I can help.

We had a nice lunch after that at a .... guess... wait for it... bar-b-que place! More beef! And it was excellent! The Brazilians can't screw up beef. However, I was beginning to fear gout or scurvy....

The afternoon was working on my Geronimo talk for Friday, spending time talking with the SOUJava folks, and in intense meditation for dinner. One must know the beef to eat the beef.

Dinner? Beef. Same place as Wed night, and there were no complaints from me. I got lucky and sat next to Simon Phipps, sparking our 3 day discussion on OSS licensing. He as a great model he uses to talk about licensing - focusing on the dynamics of the "commons" (as in "tragedy of the..."). It's not a new model, but what is fresh is how he *starts* there, and keeps the discussion there. The clearest application is to the soft copy-left licenses, like Mozilla, CPL and CDDL - where the rules require those that directly improve that which they got from the commons to give back, while still having the freedom to work around the edge without restriction. This is distinct from the BSD-like licenses with full freedom (the "rape and pillage model" according to Simon - hey... i have a Viking background...), where you can improve on the commons *and* innovate around the edge without a requirement to give back, and the strong copy-left of GPL, which says that you have no freedom - anything you do in the commons or around it must be given back to the commons. (All your code are belong to us!)

I realize that there are alternative interpretations there... :)

On my other side was Ean Schuessler, probably one of the funniest people I've run into in a long time. Reminds me of my old friend Ed Majka - spontaneous, un-edited, irreverent and smart.

It was a good evening - we more or less closed down the place, and I managed to escape without having any cachaça, the local hooch made from fermented sugar cane juice. Really nice. Not for the timid though....

One of the best moments of TSS last March was being able to introduce Craig McClanahan to Hani (BileBlog). (Another "best moment" was getting to bed before 5am...)

In honor of that event, here are all the deliberate misspellings of Craig's name by Hani that I can find :

Craig McLanalanahamabanahan
Craig Mcflanabanawanaflafla
Craig Mclanaflanapoopoo
Craig Mclanafanablahblahhan
Craig Mclalaflahwibble
Craig Mcflafla
Craig Mcclalalanasomethingortheother
Craig McBlahblah
Craig McFlaBlahlan
Craig McThingy

Brian Goetz sent this my way. It made us remember a good rant generator we used a few years back... (can't find the link).

One does wonder if these are really generated, or just picked from a good library of really incoherent papers :)

COME FROM

Saw this on Sam's blog. and thought I would give it a try.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: The Hand Grenade of Enlightenment.

Get yours.

Catching up...

Wed was a few hours at the Sun Technology Thingy, to see Bruno Souza and Onno Kluyt (Director of the PMO, the management/admin organization for the JCP) have a debate about Open Source Java. It was a great discussion, but not much of a debate - I think that both agree that Open Source Java (in terms of J2SE) is possible, and it's up to us, the open source community, to just do it. Onno presented the usual points surrounding OSS Java, and for things like compatibility, Bruno agrees (we all agree...)

After, we had a quick flight to Brasilia, and then the afternoon hanging around. Brasilia is an interesting city - it was created in the early 60's in the middle of nowhere. The government at the time just decided to move the capital there to be more central and accessible to the western and northern states. I really liked it. Such a representation of hope in the future, and belief in change for the better.

I see the same thing in the spirit of the people at this conference - how they can best use open source software for the people of Brazil, both in government and private enterprise.

Dinner was another Brazilian steakhouse. Wonderful. It also gave me a chance to explore Brazilian wine. Onno was a willing partner in crime on this one, so we started with an "assemblage", which was Cab, Merlot and Tannat. Pretty good. I then thought we should try a Brazilian Cab. I ordered one, and the guy brought back the most expensive bottle of Brazilian cab on the menu because he was out of the one I ordered. I didn't like that, so I sent him back for another bottle of the assemblage. However, while he was gone, I figured that we were in Brazil, it doesn't happen often, and it was only about $40, and we should see what their cab was like while here. So when he returned w/ the assemblage, I with much shame and sheepishness asked Bruno to offer my apologies, and ask for the cab back. I'm not sure quite what Bruno said ("Yes, I'm sorry for bringing this idiot here...") but the wine came, and it was good. It also acted as a lubricant - we got some good conversations going between Fabio (from IBM), Dalibor (of kaffe fame) and Onno. I just kept pouring :)

We are going to have at least one implementation of J2SE in open source. This is good for Sun (they don't know it, I suspect), as it's good for Java as it's good for the java community. As long as we can keep the compatibility promise, I think we'll do fine.

Take a listen to the free samples

Despite all fears of the contrary, I blew through immigration when I landed in Sao Paulo. I was fearing "the works". They even have signs for a special second line for americans, where I think they fingerprint you. I presented my "travel papers" to the agent, he stared at me, figured I was the guy in the picture, found my shiny new $100 tourist visa fresh from the consulate in NYC, stamped a few papers (they like stamping things), and said "that's it". I was so surprised, I asked him about the other line for americans. "Not today" he said. I was out of there.

I got out the doors, and no Bruno. He expected me to get "the works" and wasn't there yet. We finally connected, and he took me to a Brazilian bar-b-cue restaurant to meet with a group from SOUJava, some other Brazilian JUG leaders, and two people from Oracle. I also ran into a big group from Sun. Onno introduced me to the lady who is in charge of JavaOne. I joked that I was sorry to hear that - in that it's such a big conference and such. I hope she took it the right way - it's an enormous undertaking.... Onno also told me what dessert to get but I forgot by the time it was time.

The idea of the restaurant was amazing - they have neatly dressed waiters walking around with meat on long rotisserie skewers, hot off the grill. They ask you if you want some, and if you agree, they start slicing. Your job is to use a little set of tongs to grab the meat as it's falling away from the knife and put it on your plate. The waiter will do that for a few people and then run the skewer back into the kitchen, put it on the grill so the outside can char, and bring another one out. The waiters were very aggressive, always making sure to bring things to you. I guess it can get annoying - they supplied each person with a little paper disk, about the size of a poker chip. One side is green ("yes please!") and the other is red ("no thanks").

There were about 6 different cuts of beef - all good - and lamb and and some kind of pork sausage. "All you care to eat" as they say.

They even showed me the kitchen - I was interested - and it was a pretty simple affair. back wall was the grill "pit", a long wall with charcoal burning in a trough (50' long?), and a rack along the whole thing with chunks of meat slow roasting on the top shelf, and two layers of rotisserie racks. They built the motors into the brick wall on the back, so the waiter could just shove the end of the skewer in it, and rest the other near the handle on the rack. Very clever. They also have a table with a spice/salt trough - the roll the meat in there before going onto the fire - and a 'cuttings' trough, where small pieces that ruin the visual appeal are discarded.

They did have a big salad bar on the main floor, to assuage guilt, I suppose.

Someone warned me that they eat a lot of pizza here. I'm starting to suspect he was joking.

I've been playing with IKVM and mono on my mac (and .NET on a winxp box). I'm amazed and excited. I'm going to see if I can get Geronimo running on IKVM and see how fast it is. Someone tested Derby on IKVM, and it was faster than J2SE 1.4. Could it really be that the best way to get java to perform is run it on .NET? ;)

I'm speaking at the SouJava CaféBrazil conference this week, so I'm flying today. It's going to be a long day in a little metal tube whistling through the air 6 miles up. I managed to avoid the red-eye going down (and praying for the upgrade on the red-eye back...), landing 9pm local time, and sleeping in a local hotel. I figured that if I'm going to have to sleep during the trip down there, it might as well be in a bed. The alternative was sitting in MIA in the Admiral's club for 8 hours waiting for the red-eye. As a bonus, I can have dinner w/ Bruno (and maybe Onno) and then see them (and maybe 'help' with) their debate tomorrow at the Sun technology thingy going on in Sao Paulo.

I'm looking forward to this because what the Brazilians are doing with open source and open technology is fascinating. I don't grok it completely, but it seems they want to be sure that they avoid proprietary lock in on a national scale. One key factor is having an open source J2SE implementation - you'd think Sun would be all over this like glue. An entire country - with the domino effect to surrounding countries, you could have an entire Java Continent.

Bruno is focused on the open J2SE implementation with Roxo, and Dalibor will be there (from Kaffe). The time has come to get serious about OSS Java. I know, the Kaffe and Classpath people are serious.. so I mean it's time that I get serious and help any way I can. This week will be a start.

I'll give it one thing... even for an older laptop, it's fast. Faster than my 1.5G 17" powerbook. I've been adding the usual goodies, like JDKs, IDEA, Maven, Ant, etc.

It's been sorta fun.

Now I need to find a decent IM client that does both AIM and Yahoo, and a good IRC client.

How To Reboot WinXP : go to the "Start" menu. Choose "Turn Off Computer". In the "Turn Off Computer" dialog, choose "Restart".

(On a mac, you choose "Restart" from the apple menu...)

Given the number of times you have to Restart a winxp box, it's hard to imagine why they didn't put a "Restart" button next to the "Start" menu.

I borrowed an old wintel laptop from work. Need to do some things under winxp. Updating via the auto updates. Endless rebooting. Amazing.

It's fun to switch back between my mac laptop and the wintel laptop. The wintel really is much faster. I wonder if I can "de-garish" the UI somehow...